Second Year Module
Module Leader: Trevor Grimshaw
Description
The module offers the study of a key period in British and European social, cultural and literary history. Prompted by developments in philosophical thought and by the upheavals of the French Revolution and the English Industrial Revolution, writers responded with works that explore society, nature, religion and individual identity. The literature of the later nineteenth and the twentieth centuries has its origins in this Romantic movement, and cannot be fully appreciated without reference to Romanticism, whether continuing its innovations or reacting against them.
The module will provide for the study of the work of individual authors and of the issues and preoccupations of Romanticism. Students will be encouraged to consider the conceptions of creativity and authorship associated with the Romantic movement and the extent to which literary texts can be understood by reference to their historical context.